


Shatter

by prinxe



Category: Acquisitions Inc.
Genre: Canon Compliant, False Memories, Fantasizing, First Kiss, Kissing, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 21:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19384768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prinxe/pseuds/prinxe
Summary: Omin Dran was never very good at letting himself enjoy things. Spoilers for the PAX South 2019 game.





	Shatter

_ This is the best godsdamn drink I’ve ever had,  _ Omin thinks. He thinks it, and considers the weight of the compliment before he decides if he’s actually going to tell Bobby.

Omin Dran was raised in a bar, by a mother who prefers ale, but also, by another mother who prefers mixed drinks. He was always more fond of whiskey, himself. Neat and dark and to the point. But he knew enough to be able to  _ smell _ the quality of a good pale ale, to be able appreciate when someone got the proportions  _ just _ so on a gin and tonic.

So, this was was the best godsdamned drink he’d ever tasted. But Bobby, he thinks, doesn’t need to  _ know _ that he has skill that Omin values. It doesn’t matter; Bobby’s already left to go light up some of his dryad friend’s foliage to get high with all of Omin’s subordinates.

Omin swirls the drink and takes another sip, looking over the rim of the glass at the Ravnica skyline.

The stars look weird.

He guesses that makes sense-- these aren’t  _ his _ stars. These are  _ Ravnica  _ stars, dim and sad and drowned out by the overpowering light pollution from the city below. There’s maybe a small handful he can make out-- and even then, a few of those _ move, _ meaning the ‘star’ is actually an airship or some kind of far off glowing jellyfish someone is riding. Some ridiculous, breathtaking creature that no one else so much as notices anymore that he’d gawk at, jaw hung open in shock.

He swirls the drink in his hand, catches his reflection in it and downs the rest. 

The stars still look weird-- and then, suddenly, they  _ don’t. _

The stars suddenly look  _ normal _ . And it gets hot, face meltingly hot. He looks to the glass in has hand, and finds it gone.

“I dunno how you can stand all that fucking armor, man.” Jim leans back against the railing of the airship, unconcerned that if he so much as tilts back too far he might fall off, plummet, meet his imminent death in the thick, dense jungle foliage below.

Omin tries not the think about how many times he’s had to watch Jim die.

“It’s hot as balls.”

Omin thinks that he has been here before. That this is a memory, and it has happened, and it is over and done with, filed away and forgotten-- but also that this doesn’t  _ feel _ like a memory. He smells how humid it is, feels how hot and thick and oppressing the Chult air is in his lungs. It’s so real, it’s happening, it must be  _ happening.  _

But it can’t be happening. It  _ happened. _ But it didn’t  _ happen,  _ like this. Jim hadn’t come out to the railing to talk to him. Jim had used the toe of his boot to break the teleportation circle that brought the party onto the airship, thanked Rosie Beestinger for her help before teleporting her home, and went to his quarters with a slam of his door. He came out only to eat, or to talk to Viari, or to answer some questions the crew had about some magical phenomenon over the horizon as the airship took them back home to Waterdeep.

He didn’t look at Omin. If their eyes met, Jim’s went cold before he turned away and found something else to look at, or do.

Omin keeps looking at his hand, where the glass had been. Where he still feels it, but his fingers are empty. He inhales too hot air through his nostrils and holds it in his lungs.

He turns to look at Jim, and Jim meets his eye. “...you all right?”

“Yes.” Omin pauses, searches Jim’s face. Finds himself staring at the scar on his eyebrow, a thin and barely noticeable white line that hair no longer sprouts from. A scar that Jim’s clone did  _ not  _ have, because magical clones do not  _ clone  _ the scars,  _ because _ they are perfect. Magic does not clone the scar on Jim’s eyebrow, or the gnarled, white twists of skin on Jim’s back and chest from the Wyvern strike.

Omin tries not to think about that; he thinks about it often enough as it is.

“Omin?”

“Yes.” Omin pulls his gaze away, slow with the effort. “Yes, I’m fine. I think. No, wait. Actually, I think I’m hallucinating.”

“Yeah?” Jim tilts his head, searching Omin’s face for a reason to be alarmed. “...hallucinating what?”

“This. You.”

“I’m very much actually here.” Jim reaches out hesitantly and pats his head with an exhale that’s more laugh than anything. And it  _ feels _ real-- as real as the cold, empty glass in Omin’s hand that he  _ cannot _ fucking see, that he keeps gripping tighter and tighter until his fingers ache with the effort. Jim sighs a heavy sigh and runs his hand down Omin’s temple, to the side of his face, and lets it linger there. Intimate and unreal. Omin finds himself torn between reaching up and placing his hand over Jim’s, or lifting his maul to kill whatever unholy, monstrous,  _ mean _ illusion this must be.

He does nothing.

“I know what this is about. Man, I’m  _ fine. _ We won. The curse is gone.”

“We won.”

“Well, you won. You killed the fucking Soulmonger-- I still can’t believe it wasn’t a person. I really could have--”

“Jim, that was  _ months _ ago.”

“That was hours ago.”

Jim’s hand is so warm. It’s so warm, and getting warmer, until Omin realizes it’s not the hand that’s hot but the color rising up from his neck and into his face, his ears. The air feels too thick to breathe. He might be drowning.

This is just like how he imagined it. How he imagined it would be, when it was over-- Jim, healed of his necrotic curse. Jim, appreciative of what Omin had done for him. Jim,  _ understanding _ why he had  _ done _ what he had  _ done. _ His intentions clear, and Jim-- grateful. Understanding.

Recipricitive. 

Jim thumbs at the apple of Omin’s cheek. 

Omin swallows down a protest forming in his throat. Swallows it and forces it away. Banishes the thoughts of  _ this isn’t real _ and  _ this isn’t how it happened _ and  _ he still won’t make eye contact with me.  _

He places his hand over Jim’s and takes his weight off the railing. “What happened?”

“We won.”

Omin tightens his hand around Jim’s. “What  _ happened, _ Jim. What did… did I…say--”

“Oh.” Jim colors, and laughs and it makes Omin sick to hear it, sick with how much he misses the sound. “Yeah? Uh. I mean, if you wanna talk about it--”

He doesn’t want to talk about it. He can’t. He won’t.

Omin takes a too heavy step forward, feels as if he might fall.

He feels the glass slip from his hand, eyes closing as he makes contact with Jim’s mouth, crushing against his lips. He inhales humid, jungle air through his nose and lets his mouth open against Jim’s.

And Jim kisses him back, unquestioning, unhesitant. As stupidly, endlessly relieved that they’re not dancing around  _ this _ anymore as Omin is.

Omin can hear a pleasured sound escape Jim’s throat and damn near loses his balance.

He brings his hands to Jim’s neck to steady himself, and to pull Jim in and against him. He feels the flutter of Jim’s pulse under his palm and the soft slide of Jim’s tongue against his and knows, knows,  _ knows  _ that this fake, that this is too much in line with how he’d always imagined it would be to ever be _ real,  _ but he can’t bring himself to stop, to care. Not yet. Not when Jim’s arms are wrapping around his neck, not when Jim is sighing into his mouth.

The Chult air is still oppressively hot and he reluctantly breaks the kiss to  _ gasp _ for air. He thinks,  _ this would be humiliating if it were real. _ He can just  _ hear _ Jim mocking him for it, smug and sneering and sing song with some lewd, inappropriate joke to go with it.

Instead Jim whispers a hurried  _ I love you _ before trying to kiss Omin again.

Omin jerks back, clumsily pulling out of Jim’s arms to stare, wide eyed and panicked. Feels his heart hammer behind his eyes and in his ears, overpowering the sound of his own voice. “What?”

Jim stares back like a deer in the headlights, his stupid, beautiful purple eyes widening, searching Omin’s for an explanation to why he was suddenly  _ acting _ like this when just twenty seconds ago he had had his tongue in Jim’s mouth. “I. Love you?”

Omin barks out a brittle laugh. “Fuck.” He reaches for his maul, unhooking it from his belt with a practiced movement. “Fuck. No you don’t.” He brings it up over his head, trying to look anywhere but at Jim’s paling face. “No you  _ don’t!” _

He brings it down on--

**_CLANG._ **

Omin inhales freezing cold air and stares at his maul, sunk into the metal of the railing, reshaping it to follow the hard, metal angles of his weapon. He keeps breathing, in harder, shorter breaths, his lungs feeling too cold, all heat he had escaping through his cheeks and ears to be replaced with a harsh, icy bitterness. 

The stars are wrong, again. The jungle is gone, its trees and rivers replaced with an endless city skyline. The world beneath his feet is stable.

Jim is gone.

Jim was never _ here. _

He shifts a foot aside and hears a musical clink of broken glass from the floor.

He does not startle when frantic, hurried footsteps approach. “Good gods, boy, you allright?”

Omin turns to look at Vai and nods, wordless, feeling foolish, feeling like a child under her narrow eyed, angry glare. “Yes. I. I’m sorry, I can-- metal is  _ stone,  _ I can reshape it in the morning after I sleep--”

“Bad trip?” Vai guesses, looking at the broken glass. Omin follows her gaze, eyes narrowing as he pieces together what Bobby must have done to him.

“Yeah.”

He pushes the shattered glass off the side of the building with a swipe of his boot.

“Something like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Oops! All feelings.


End file.
